Edwin Land and Polaroid: The Instant Photo Genius Ousted by His Board

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Edwin H. Land left Harvard after his freshman year to chase one problem: how to control the direction of light. He solved it by embedding microscopic iodine crystals in stretched plastic, creating a polarizing sheet that cut glare. The company he founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1937 sold that material as sunglasses, 3D movie glasses, goggles for military working dogs, and night viewing devices. Then, in the late 1940s, Land collapsed the darkroom into the film itself and gave the world instant photography.

This episode follows Polaroid from the Land Camera Model 95 to the SX-70 of 1972, a camera that ejected a sealed, dry print that developed in daylight. It also covers the battles of the 1970s: a ten year patent fight with Kodak, an employee movement protesting the use of Polaroid technology in apartheid South Africa, and the costly failure of Polavision. That flop ended Land's 43 years as chief executive and foreshadowed the company's bankruptcy in October 2001.

• Land's instant film attached a foil pod of jelly-like developer to each frame. Steel rollers crushed the pod and spread the chemicals as the film left the camera.
• The SX-70 relied on opacifying dyes that formed a temporary chemical curtain over the image, then cleared as the color picture appeared.
• After Kodak launched instant cameras in 1976, Land sued for patent infringement. A federal court ordered Kodak out of the business, and it paid a settlement of over 900 million dollars.
• Employees Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams formed the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement in 1970 after finding the company's technology was used for South African passbook photos. Both were fired, and Polaroid ended direct sales there in 1977.
• Polavision, an instant home movie system launched in 1977, arrived just as VHS and Betamax took over and led to an 89 million dollar write-off.